


All for Freedom and for Pleasure

by orphan_account



Category: Project Wingman (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Self-Indulgent, Slow Dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:28:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28805061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Two aces dance.
Relationships: Comic/Diplomat
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	All for Freedom and for Pleasure

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a prompt made by Project Wingman's Writer:
> 
> Dip and Comic dancing in a hanger alone because Dip doesn't want to fall out of practice on his obviously rich boy ball dancing skills and Comic always, out of a lack of better judgement, entertains him like she always does because they're wingmen

It's somewhere past midnight in the middle of the Periphery and Sicario is split up.

It doesn't happen often, but it's sometimes safer that way: It's not always necessary for all of the mercenary company to be present during a particular contract. If anything, it's less costly; less fuel needs to be spent, less ammo needs to be used, and generally logistics are kept down. For those that aren't called to serve out a contract, it's downtime, rest, which is rare for Sicario.

Some of the Sicario are more than willing, at least for a time, to melt back into a regular, civilian population and live a regular life, spending the fortunes made from blood money and contacts down. Some of them indulge in high luxuries, high vices and sin; gems and jewelry for the sake of it, high tier gear and equipment to improve battlefield effectiveness. Some don't know what to do, so they sit wherever they're hiding, resting, or existing and simply bide their time until warfare comes knocking again.

Comic is of the latter brand, and more restless than anything as she sits in that civilian airfield, rented out for a few weekss for the portion of Sicario that's sitting out to have a place to hang their weapons, aircraft, and other large, usually explosive and illegal possessions.

Comic is also, that night, sitting on a foldable chair with a hand propping up her usually less than approachable face, Hitman 2.

Hitman 1 is sitting properly besides her on the other end of the table, typing out into a console connected directly into his aircraft's software management.

Though it's not really the Hitman 1. It's a matter of procedure and formality. Monarch, her actual flight lead, is with the portion of Sicario that is actively engaged in their own contract just a few borders away. So, for the time being, Hitman has been whittled down to a two man flight.

Diplomat, the current Hitman 1 by technicality, the same man with eyes glued on a burningly plain screen of aircraft diagnostics and unicode, lorded it over her for the first few weeks during their first "vacation" in a while. However even that fell away, and now, for the first time in years, they've dropped their nom de guerres. It's a private affair, yes, but no one from the rest of Sicario has much bothered them. Their guards are down:

"Evie." Diplomat scooches his hair back as he stretches himself upon it, hands brought to his face, dragging down tired eyes. "Eve." He says again one of his many ways to say her name. In this privileged moment he does take the opportunity to say it out loud instead of a measured whisper, like they usually do. Her name bounces off the walls of that hangar they find themselves in, starkly white, sheened floors of a civilian standard and the not the military-type they usually find themselves. It's bright, the lights above burning into them. "Eva."  
  
Saying each others names like this, it's not unfamiliar to either of them, however in this moment, alone in a hanger, her name echoing, it strikes something in her.

Comic is also somewhat limp in her chair. "What?" She half-way groans. She's sore, both of them are. A reflection of their aircraft which they share the hangar with right now. This entire space is technically their residency for however long the active Sicario will be on their contract, and it's fine, they've turned what office portion of that hangar exists into a place to sleep, and given that their stay their is looking like a several month affair, it turns a little too naturally into a cohabited space.

"Why'd you do this to me." His hand is splayed out to his precious aircraft; the back end of it is slightly ajar, carbon and burn marks scarring its back as if its soot-dipped.  
  
Comic can only commit a shrug that pains her shoulders. "Don't blame me for how you fly."  
  
He's always half-measures and gut feelings for as long as she's known him. Guessed maneuvers and knee-jerk reactions in the sky makes him her antithesis: compared to her training, her flying style, derived from pen and paper and theory and history from a thousand different dogfights from a hundred different aces. It's one of the oldest dichotomies, she knows: someone like him, and someone like her. It's perhaps too much of a contrived idea that their flying styles are derived from them as people, but she believes it of them very much, loathe as she is to admit. At the very least, she knows that Diplomat flies like she knows him to be: right down to the way he tried to do a zero-speed maneuver that dragged one of his stabilizers right across her left wing.  
  
For all intents and purposes, even flight has been robbed of them.  
  
"Ah come on 'Mick." He groans. "Here I was thinking I was doing you a favor by doing a mock fight with ya."  
  
That's what they were doing that day, on Dip's insistence. _("Yeah it'll be fine. When was the last time me and you threw down alone? It's always us versus Monarch, and I want to actually have a fair fight for once!")  
_

Mock fights are all sensors and good will, but even then the pilot still pilots and the aircraft still flies, right down the jet fuel and flying steel and combat impulses developed over years of fighting. Diplomat versus Comic is a show many of the other vacationing Sicario came to see, and they got a choice combat performance from two of Sicario's best pilots, second only to who many whisper as the Boss's Signature. Perhaps the two Hitmen would've been Signatures unto themselves at some point, however this is a different time, and this was a fair fight all the way down to an actual mid-air collision which has left some of Comic's wing paneling just outside of base and Diplomat wishing he knew how to better service his own aircraft.  
  
"Yeah, real big favor you did me." She flatly states as her F/C-15 now has an entire wing removed from it and waiting for a replacement.  
  
Diplomat opens his mouth to quip back, to fire back, but it's past midnight and he's tired, catching himself half way as Comic tenses for the volley. None comes. "Sorry."  
  
Comic's rebuke, any venom in her, melts away. It really is too late to do their routine, even in private: their comfortable ramble that makes the uninitiated assume that they really don't like each other. "It's okay." They do.  
  
They're not scrapping by, the money and resources they have between the two of them makes this little mishap they have a non-issue. Parts are cheap, but people aren't. It's a shame, they both think, looking at their aircraft, that Hitman's mechanic travels with Monarch. "Prez's gonna have my ass if I don't fix this up when the Boss and the rest of them comes back." Dip groans into his hands, burying, hiding himself in the cup of his palms. That's why, they've just been there since the dogfight just mulling over diagnostics and makeshift engineering, because what else is there? The way they fight each other stretches themselves thin, and yet they crave it. It is a good fight, and they are good pilots, and what are they but mercenary dogs who must be tested every once and a while? But they're more than that and what they do. Dip hears the chair be moved next to him before he can see it, and, suddenly, someone else is typing on the diagnostics computer as he allows himself just a few moments of microsleep.  
  
"Jeez, you really never dig deep into your plane, do you Dip?"  
  
He picks his head up and Comic has taken the laptop instead, eyes scanning over what she can read. He trusts her that she won't do anything too bad to his aircraft. "Hey, if I don't hear, see, or feel any issue up there, that means it's all good."  
  
"Right..." Comic lets him believe his truths as she simply put the aircraft through some rather basic hardware checks from her end, the flaps and stabs of the aircraft going over as they do their automatic benchmarking as the main issue, the thrust vectoring engines that have been grafted onto Dip's particular airframe, are scratchy and rough and visibly dripping onto the tarp pre-emptively set up. "This is my program." She states simply.  
  
"Mmm." He groans into his hands as Dip's aircraft animates on its own. Aircraft maintenance isn't just typing into a computer of course, it's opening panels and wrenches and grease and oil, but that's not what they want to fully get into tonight.  
  
Dinner that was delivered by one of the Circus sits cold and unopened on that table as instead they concentrated, left in take out containers from a local fast food joint. _("That stuffs always tastes better reheated anyway." Dip makes comment nearly two hours after.)_ With the both of them physically exhausted and still needing to tend to their aircraft, the hunger in their mind satiated by keeping busy. Early on in their career it was a habit to cut down their own costs, but soon enough the money came rolling in and self starvation wasn't necessary. Still even they get moody by themselves and forgo the meal and let the hunger drive them. Insanity to anyone else, perhaps, but they are unique people, and their hunger goes beyond physical ideas of satiation and need.  
  
A thought flashes by Dip with the idea of how they even got into this tired situation that they are in right now. "Some dance moves you did up there. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery you know."  
  
She rolls her eyes. "You're not that hard to keep glued on."  
  
She flies an aircraft that is, comparatively to Dip's, large and fast. Dip's more nimble and agile with an aircraft that's not nearly as big. The fact that she was able to keep glued onto him that close that they did touch in mid-air is something Diplomat more than realizes as she squares up his gaze with a raised eyebrow, he simply lays his head on the table, facing her, arms crossed and used to rest on. "Oh I've seen it before, mind you. No prim and proper with your type of training would ever get that close to any target. I do it because their jet wash improves my tan."  
  
She puffs some air out of her nose as she crosses her own arms, legs brought up and across Dip's lap. "Dancing. Hmph. What do you know about dancing?" She tries to deflect, but trying to deflect Dip is like trying to sweep sunshine from the sidewalk: it's not gonna happen.  
  
"Lots." He says, as if insulted. "I know tons about dancing. That's all rich people do you know, out in Presidia?"  
  
Its perhaps the first time in years they've spoken a name from their home country, and it pauses them for just a moment, an internal battle come and gone as it had for most of their adult lives. "Yeah." Comic says simply. "Sure." She lets him have it. Though she does know in her own way.

He's to his feet in a rejuvenation at midnight light. "I'm a man of many skills, my dear Comic," he says with as much faux dramatism as he can, bowing to her as she smirks as sees him put on this character, this mockery of his own blood and family. "Horse back riding, jockeying, fox hunting, croquet and crochets and croque monsieur making."  
  
"The hell is a croque monsieur?"

"It's what upper class people like me are supposed to called grilled cheeses with ham... but point is, oh boy, Comic, I know what it is to dance."  
  
"I'm sure you do, Dip."  
  
"Heyyy I know how you say my name when you're doubting me. I'm serious. When rich parents want to march out their kids in front of the other rich families and show them off they make us dance. Ball dancing that is. Whole bunch of steps in that, and if you get any wrong or if you do it too right, some dude with a moustache and a petty coat and a glass clipboard gives you a mean look and Dad doesn't talk to you for a day."  
  
Maybe it's the fact that it has been such a long day that the thought in her mind and the words out of her mouth collude and she admits, "I know how to dance too, dammit." Her eyes go wide as she realizes what she's done. All she can do is explain as Dip leans in to almost eye level with her. "Squadron leaders and base commanders had this sorta ball that we all went to in Prospero. It wasn't my style but it was bad form to not show up for my first year."  
  
Her first year was her last, and she was one to talk about bad form, given how she became a mercenary. "What kinda dress and heel number could you kick up huh?" Dip questions aloud, perhaps not too ashamedly looking her up and down and, like for 90% of the last few years, she and him are wearing nothing but their flight suits. She reaches up, softly swiping at his chin with her index and middle finger as he backs off just in time.  
  
"None that I didn't earn, I'll tell you that." She resents him for the life he grew up in, but not him himself, so she reminds Dip from time to time, and he can only smile it off as he backs off and pulls out his phone from his pocket, downing the flat soda now left in a plastic cup for him as the drink is replaced by a phone. He burps himself over to the empty part of the hangar in front of that table, mindful of the data cables as the cup comes alive. "What're you doing, Dip?"  
  
"Ah, just doing what feels right and good. Keeping myself limber and lithe. Watch."

* * *

_Many men with lofty aims,_  
_Strive for lofty goals,_  
_Others play at smaller games,_  
_Being simpler souls._

* * *

It's as if the upper half of his body locks, like those wind up ballerinas, arms making a half crescent as the music goes on. It's a piano and string peace, it's slow and low and meant for midnight hours like this. It's meant for whiskey sours and vodka on the rocks. It's meant for, apparently, a grown man in a stark white hanger, his boots tapping slowly on the reflective ground with two military combat jets to his back.

* * *

_I am of the latter brand;_

_All I want to do,_

_Is to find a spot of land,_

_And live there with you._

* * *

It's almost like he pirouettes as he follows an invisible circle with his foot work, and on his face is a concentrated look she hasn't seen before on him. "You see it's all about the foot work. Y'gotta pretend there's like little slots in the ground to slide into as you hold this form, bow and weave to the music." His voice intercuts with the smoky voiced music and, oddly, he fits right in.  
  
"I see." She can't help but be amused as she realizes Dip is putting on a show for her, to amuse her. He does this often enough, puts himself up like this, that she knows better by now than to wonder what he's doing, for she knows the why, shamelessly: to get a rise of out her.

* * *

_Someday we'll build a home on a hilltop high,_

_You and I, Shiny and new, a cottage that two can fill._

_And we'll be pleased to be called,_

_"The folks who live on the hill"._

* * *

She was very annoyed with him once, when they first started working together. He was a man filled with privilege in his bones, blood, and name. He was a Kennedy, for the Dust Mother's sake! His name went beyond not only their history, but from before the Calamity. In him was townhouses and canterlots, national importance and every need met with the power to dictate politics and the lives of Cascadia. Those with his name is the reason why she lived the way she did, out in Cascadia's sticks. Her reckoning with Diplomat, with Peter Kennedy, was when he came to Sicario. She spat at him with venom, looked at him with an evil eye, backed him into a corner and berated him for becoming a merc. Irony however, was how her life was found: He was a merc, yes, a no-good merc hailing from a family who would have no association, who was too proper to see one of its own become one... but so was she.

They weren't here because they wanted to be.  
  
He was a better man in a bad place, but because of that, he was among the best. All jokes, all conversation and life experiences and fanciful anecdotes that reminded people around of that there was a proper life beyond what they did. It's in the way he's never bothered, playing it cool, that Comic appreciates. It keeps her down to earth as much as it does him.

In the end, whatever mess their airplanes are in now, it is because of his good faith. She wasn't doing too well just sitting on her ass all day in the meadow heat of an empty summer. She was always someone to be doing something, challenging something, challenging herself. The motion she goes through is very military, and the language she speaks, Dip only did his best today to try and speak it with her in a mock dogfight just to get her blood going.  
  
He always does try to get a rise out of her, even as he dances.

* * *

_Our veranda will command a view of meadows green,_

_The sort of view that seems to want to be seen._

_And when the kids grow up and leave us,_

_We'll sit and look at the same old view,_

_Just we two._

* * *

At some point she realizes that he's been singing along softly, and soon after that she realizes he has cut loose, like he always does. He comes to his own, uniquely, letting his body and hands flow like tracing contrails in the sky slowly. It's funny, Comic thinks: He'd never make a fool of himself like this in front of anyone else. She is perhaps the exception, she realizes as she rolls her eyes again as he does a swoop with his body.  
  
_"Hitman 2 is a good position," he tells her when Monarch and Kaiser hand off Hitman 1 to him temporarily. "I'm not quite the center of attention, but I'm close enough to get the benefits. Now this is just too much responsibility man."  
  
"I'll frag you if you'd rather hand the position down." She teases flatly, and Dip can only respond with a shake of his head.  
  
"Now that's not a dignified way of taking the position from miss pulled-up-from-my-bootstraps-in-a-log-cabin is it?" His teasing is always that of a rhetorical question, with the hint of him leaning just the slightest closer to her. She knows it very well._

Dying in this trade isn't usually dignified, and she is filled with a certain amount of dread thinking about it. They're not the first Hitmen in these position, and her actually becoming Hitman 1, or even 2, presupposes that Diplomat is gone. She squashes the thought like Dip squashes the data cable as he accidentally steps on it, stumbling over as he recovers, putting on a grand, white teeth smile to her as if nothing went wrong. All Comic do is do a soft clap as he continues on.  
  
She likes Dip; that much she is able to coherently, consciously, unshamefully, admit in her own thoughts. She likes the whole of him, no if ands or buts. She has to be frank in a business where old is thirty and they're barely past 25. She feels old right now even, but her g-suit can only ward off the forces so much before it crumples her, credit to how Dip is light of foot right now. She doesn't feel old enough to not write off that she might be in the position to realize she might be crushing on the man in some silly girlhood way. Maybe it was the snide joking of her mother at a young age to marry rich that has imprinted on her, but fighting off those intrusive thoughts whenever she and Dip have a moment alone only leads her down different mental paths: Of the way he is so at ease around her and her around him, of how naturally they volley banter and insults and knowing that nothing will stick because it's not meant to harm, of steadfast aerial support; of literally holding each other's lives in each other's care, and always being able to count on the safe keeping of it. She trusts him in the way, even right now, with how he remains himself despite what they've become. Whenever he makes conversation with the other pilots and crew in Sicario, the room lights up, the veils come down, and for a moment they're not mercenaries. They're just a bunch of pals, buds, and friends.  
  
She thinks of those things often with Dip when her mind forces her to, and she has to, otherwise they're thinking about how he's got that face that Cascadian media loves from its high society, and she'd be lying to herself if she doesn't like the way his brown hair fluffs up after a shower or how he's got just the right amount of height over her that makes some primal part of her feel like she's pulling negative Gs in her core and makes it, when they do catch each other's eyes when they're in breath's distance of each other, liable for her to break away or else blush.  
  
She's not the type of woman to admit that she'd rather have Dip's company than not in ways that would make people question them.  
  
But she is the way she is, and because of that, most of Sicario shys away from Hitman as a whole, and the questions are kept to a minimum.  
  
They're alone right now though, and so these thoughts fly past her like Dip himself in mid-altitude combat and he really, really wants to go head on with her in a gun running pass.

* * *

_Darby and Joan who used to be Jack and Jill,_

_The folks who like to be called,_

_What they have always been called,_

_"The folks who live on the hill"._

* * *

In a final flourish, he, somehow, finds the tip of his toe on his boot, and he spins himself once or twice like a fast top as the final piano notes come down and away, he bowing in recognition in it.  
  
With a panted breath he was holding in an the uneasiness he usually exhibits after breakneck maneuvers like that, almost unbelieving that he just pulled it off: "I've got so many ribbons for ballroom dancing it's not even funny."  
  
She chuckles as he accepts another slow clap from her, a thought taking over: "Hey, Dip?"  
  
"Mm?" He returns to her by the table, sitting on it.  
  
"Don't you usually have partners for this type of stuff?"  
  
He gazes out the hanger for a moment, exposed to the open air and the world beyond in its dark night, the twinkling lights of the distant town, and the closer lights of the runway's navigationals are blinking at them. "I mean, yeah, but solo acts are also a thing. Usually none of my siblings wanted to dance with me so I, uh, got used to doing it alone." He rubs the back of his neck, "Not that I don't know how to dance with a partner. Tons of women constantly ask me you know. Out in.. uh, bars, and ballrooms I go to off duty."  
  
"Right." Comic sees through him and he tries to put on his poker face. It's unfortunate that a joker isn't usually played in that game however, and Dip sees the irony of it as he remembers what her emblem is.  
  
"I swear on Monarch's name." He bargains. He doesn't have to.  
  
Comic only bumps out Dip's phone in exchange for her in their impromptu cup speaker, and she rises, and suddenly she doesn't feel too sore as she just does what feels good that night, same as him.  
  
A piano rings out from her phone's speaker: music, almost the same sort as Dip's song. "Audiotree Live presents, Diane Birch, with her cover of Everybody Wants to Rule the World."  
  
"Oh. Not a bad choice." Dip is impressed before he feels fingers, laying across his gingerly. Looking down at it to trace it back up to its owner: Evelyn London the Third.

* * *

_Welcome to your life_  
_There's no turning back_

* * *

To him, Comic's been unique, if not a treasured part of his own self-actualization. She is, if nothing else, the force at his back that helps him balance against the oncoming wind. She is the only force that he doesn't really mind in his life; the encouragement that no amount of teachers, distant parents or relatives, social norms and expectations could garner in him his own self. Of course he's more than someone else's drive, but the encouragement she gives isn't forced, isn't handed to him. Her encouragement is something that came along with an unlikely friendship.  
  
They're both Cascadian, that was the ground they both started at, but growing up from that in the years since has proven to Dip that bonds beyond family can be made.  
  
She spat at him when they first met, and here they are, a lifetime later it feels, holding hands as she leads the both of them back to where he just was on the speckled white floor, ghostly reflections of them seen in it.

* * *

_Even while we sleep,_  
_We will find you,_  
_Acting on your best behavior_  
_Turn your back on Dust Mother's nature,_  
_Everybody wants to rule the world,_

* * *

She, more than anyone in the time it took him to disappear from the Academy and make his own way in the Periphery, eventually being picked up by Sicario, has reminded him of who he is. He detested her for that, spat venom back, but it was a joke when Kaiser said this of them: _You're both here now. **You're both mercenaries.  
**_

She was a lower class woman from Cascadia's forest communities, the type of people that never found their way to Presidia, the type of people that his family washed their hands of (literally) after occasional photo ops up near the Grimwood Forests or the Burning Coasts. He more than she knew at first understood why she would detest people like him.  
  
His right hand finds the small of her back as the other seizes her slightly outstretched one, creating an outer wing between them as her free lays over his heart.  
  
"You lead, I'll follow." Hitman 1 says to the Hitman 2, and those designations all of the sudden don't feel right. "You've always been flight leader to me anyway." Dip avoids her gaze as Comic only blinks a few times at that, taking it in her. It's not in their best interest to really talk about that now as she nods once, and they begin.  
  
She's not a cold woman, as much as first impressions might lead some to believe in Sicario. She's just very frank, very blunt, and perhaps just a little blood thirsty. Though he's okay knowing Comic like that; he thinks himself a sociopath sometimes by how easy some of their heavier situations just slide off of him. Maybe he's a little too cool for school, but at least he got to go to one. Comic did not; or, at least, to the same type of pedigreed schools he did.  
  
Who among them in Sicario didn't get carried away from time to time in battle? At least she was good at it.  
  
Maybe she's getting carried away now, Dip thinks as he's forgotten when they've started moving in sync and they start tracing those circles in the ground in a slow rhythm to hollow volume'd music. At first, he worries about tangling with her own feet, but there is no worry. They've done this dance before. Perhaps not exactly, but every time they fly.

* * *

_It's my own design,_  
_It's my own remorse,_  
_Help me to decide,_  
_Help me make the most of freedom and of pleasure,_

* * *

She's a very reserved on the ground, and it is perhaps one of the great private joys in his life to make her lively from what he could do, ranging from poking her, all the way up to taking her on in a one versus one dogfight.  
  
This is perhaps one of the best results he's gotten yet as their fingers intertwine finally.  
  
He likes her. That much he can admit to himself without going any further and picking at that shoebox in the dark corner of his head that also holds darker thoughts like the "I miss my Mom" thought and "I wonder how my sister is doing?" idea. And yet she isn't a dark secret of his; far from it. She is Evelyn London the Third and he takes as many excuses as he can to drop the merc act and to say her absolutely amazing name as much as he can without drawing too much attention from the rest of Sicario.   
  
He's never doubted her in his life, and in that, he confides in her any failures of his own in the sky, and perhaps on the ground.  
  
It's why he trusts she really does know how to ballroom dance and that she probably isn't too peeved her aircraft is out of action now, the shadow of their two jets ocassionally crossed by them as the female singer speaks lyrics of better futures.

* * *

_There's a room where the light won't find you,_  
_Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down,_  
_When they do, I'll be right behind you,_

* * *

"A full bird colonel asked me to the ball, you know." Their eyes have been softly locked the entire time, half-lidded and happy, their background fading into a hazy, fuzzy, warm nothingness as they center themselves around each other and the feeling of this slow dance.  
  
Dip thinks a moment before he responds. "Euew. A little bit creepy if he was up there."  
  
Comic tips her head a little, pursing her lips. "A little bit."  
  
Dip would be lying if he didn't think Comic wasn't a good looking woman. Maybe he's the type to like a woman who can kick his ass, or maybe he's the type to like women who walk like Comic do, who have gorgeous faces and gorgeous eyes but hide it behind hands-on work and messy dirty blonde bangs that occasionally get in the way: like right now.  
  
He drops her outstretched hand softly as she instead grabs onto his shoulders, letting him bring a hand up to brush a lock of her hair behind her ears. She leans into the warmth of his hand as he does it, and they don't both pretend to not know how they look right now.

* * *

_So glad we've almost made it_  
_So sad they had to fade it_  
_Everybody wants to rule the world._

* * *

They continue their comfortable dance right now, and Dip softly whispers something or another: loose thoughts on how this was natural, and that she was an alright dancer, and this happened all the time to him and she should honestly be thankful it's him. Those words never really manifest and instead it's just messy breaths and she is softly laughing and shaking her head as she has done perhaps one of the oldest things that all women derive some feminine pride from: flustering a boy. Remarkably he doesn't mess up.  
  
For all of his faults Dip never fails to deliver.  
  
"Hey lemme do this I see this in the movies all the time."  
  
"Huh-? Woah!" Her hand is seized again as his other pushes upon one side of her body.  
  
_Oh._  
  
She trusts him as she simply let's the momentum take her, and she twirls with her hand held above her. Hair that has been already haphazardly held by a rubberband unfurls and Dip gets a face full of hair that is very rarely ever let down as the musical of soft piano and a romantic voice goes on. As the spin stops, Dip tries one last thing, barring his arm across her back as he leans in, and she, naturally, leans back as the weight of her head drapes her head back.  
  
The singing starts again:

* * *

_All for freedom and for pleasure_  
_'Cuz nothing lasts forever..._

* * *

She looks up at him as she hangs off his arm, and he looks down. She smirks up at him, of course he likes this view of her, and although no words are exchanged they have that volley of banter as he brings her back up, and they stand chest to chest, body to body.  
  
Yes, both of their aircraft are out of action because of a marginally stupid dare on his part, but she took it in the end. She doesn't mind the outcome though if this is what it resulted in. Why she doesn't mind it she doesn't want to think about. She doesn't want to think about anything as Dip lazily leans in and places his forehead against hers and she impulsively, softly, coos out a sound of contentment. Her right leg without her consent has hinged up as his hands is at the small of her back again and she tries to put her hands back to where they were when they were dancing. Instead she just ends up with her arms around him and he doesn't mind.

* * *

_All for freedom and for pleasure_  
_Because nothing ever, ever lasts forever..._

* * *

"Always been flight lead to you, huh?" She says it so quietly, but it doesn't matter when they're so close Dip smells the tobacco off her tongue and she can feel the phantom of some frizz on her upper lip from his own shave.  
  
He breaks the forehead connection and Comic garners all she can within her to not follow him out, he shrugs, even in her grasp. "I can't follow Monarch... _We_ can't follow Monarch. So you're my next best thing Evelyn." As if they're just part of Hitman; wingmen.  
  
Her full first name is the rarest of what he calls her in private. "Peter..." She whispers back, hand brought up, tracing his sideburns, his ear, running her fingers through hair at the back of his neck.  
  
Imbued with trust and confidence; it's her why. She was born to command, to lead, to take charge. It fills her with contentment beyond her years and Dip's always been a man to serve others. They work out so very well.  
  
It's not the first time they've been like this. It's not the first time questions in the corner of their minds in regards to their hearts and feelings are brought forth. They're adults. They're pilots. They're mercenaries. They're alive and thriving because they trust the characters of them with all their training and experience to carry them through the worst of it, there are no questions that can be asked or answered inside of their heads as they simply live and exist in this exact moment where they are: in between their aircraft in a lonely hangar, in the middle of the periphery, sometime past midnight.

* * *

_Everybody wants to rule the world._

* * *

There are many contracts they take as mercenaries, many bets they take and lose and win.  
  
The Deal between them is a contract that is blank, and yet to be filled.  
  
Inches, centimeters, millimeters: like the fine tuning of a gun piper on a target, they both lean in with pensive, and yet content looks on their faces.  
  
Dip feels the tip of her lips on his and Comic breaths in his taste (faintly of mint leaves).  
  
Not the first time they've done something like, and not the last. They both pull away at the last second, amused at themselves at their gall, even as Comic frames his face with her hands and Dip is holding her so closely, so tightly, she can feel it imprinting into her physical memory for safe keeping.  
  
"Sheesh. Way too romantic." He shakes his head away from her. "When was the last time any of us have gotten any action that we're resorting to this?"  
  
"I don't shit where I eat, o wingman of mine." Comic chuckles, but even then its a thin excuse. They originally called her Comic because she was always giggling, laughing... How much she's changed, how far she's gone, and how good it feels to be pulled back by Dip.

It's the dangerous idea of future and beyond that makes moments like these always cut off before a full realization. Like any furball, they have to shake off the mass of it before they finish up. That's why they talk themselves down and let the music end into nothingness to be replaced by neon lights glowing and air conditioning as, finally, half a minute passes over. Without the dangerous weight of romantic reckoning and the full acknowledgement of why they do this, they lean back in.  
  
Pressed up against his chest Diplomat can feel Comic's breasts and gun poking into him and it's an awfully odd feeling that he concentrates on for but a moment before he just melts into their kiss, and who is Comic but to lean back and let him do the chasing after her as they share the kiss that less-than-lovers share. Not too much tongue, not too wet, but the fact they're doing it means something they'd rather not say.  
  
Perhaps it's the fact they are completely alone for once in that midnight hour, maybe it's the propriety of doing this amidst their aircraft, still sore and fresh from a dogfight, but this is the dance they do as pilots and neither would have it any other way.

Borders. They have borders between what they do to each other. Though a mercenary lord, lost now, wandering, questioned them and their artificial existence beyond Human natural understanding. Every mercenary since his time has questioned borders in all forms, and the border of Peter Kennedy's and Evelyn London's relationship is being pressed on in the same way her back is against the clean floor as he runs fingers through miskept hair and she moans into his mouth.  
  
There's a step beyond that border, but neither are fit or willing to pass it as they release from each other's grips panting, wordless, suddenly aware of where they are are checking their sectors to make sure no one saw. No one, hopefully, has. Propping herself on her shoulders, hair in a mess, Diplomat only gives her a hairband that he keeps on his wrist for her (or Prez, if the situation arises). She cups his cheek in an appreciative palm, and ties herself back into a bun.  
  
The laptop beeps, the aircraft has been going this entire time. It's an affirmative beep that means it needs to be attended to, and wordlessly the two pilots return to the table and their chairs as if nothing had happened.

* * *

Weeks later, Prez has returned with the rest of Sicario, and as she waits for Monarch's plane to have new parts delivered, she takes a look at Comic's plane. Comic, being astute as she is, keeps a report on damages sustained and if Comic was damaged, so was Dip. She is loathed to actually start looking at their planes, especially since it wasn't real battle damage, but with nothing to do that day she hops onto Comic's fighter and peels back her patchwork paneling.  
  
It's not hers however. On the flipside of the metal paneling on her wing she sees stenciled by a knife: Dip waz here!  
  
Later, reading back Dip's own diagnostics, she sees Comic's handiwork all over it.  
  
"Urgh. Why do these two get all the vacation time?" She says half-aggravated, half-dreamily, looking over to Hitman as a whole, standing in the sun, looking at mock dogfights, only somewhat envious as Dip leans into Comic to say something and she shakes her head like she always does. It looks so perfect as Monarch stands off to the sides. 


End file.
